Conference Speaker Profile - Barry Bebb  
 
Barry Bebb

Biography: Barry was born and lived in Wichita Falls, Texas through High School years.  His first career was professional motorcycle racing, ranking as high as sixth in the nation racing only part time intermixed with completing his Bachelor’s in Physics from the University of Oklahoma in 1959.  He married Sue December 21, 1958, the longest night of the year, and fathered two children.  Sue passed away last year, November 30, 2007.
     
Barry joined IBM Military Products Division June 1959 and transferred to the T. J. Watson Research Laboratory in late 1960. He received his Master’s Degree through the University of Syracuse extension program at IBM in 1962 and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Engineering Physics from the University of Rochester in 1966.  He received the Outstanding Alumni Award from University of Rochester’s College of Engineering and Applied Science in 1991.

Barry returned to Texas with Texas Instruments’ Corporate Research Laboratory in 1966 as a Theoretical Physicist and was appointed Director of the Advanced Technology Lab in late 1969. He joined Xerox Corporation in 1974. After several management positions including Director of Electronic Printing and Reprographic Department of the newly created Systems Division responsible for productizing the Ethernet, Star Personal Workstations, and Electronic Printers/Copiers, he was appointed acting Vice President of the Electronics Division, El Segundo, California.  In January, 1981, he was promoted to Group Vice President tasked to create and head a Reprographic System Division in Rochester, New York.  After several other jobs, he was appointed as General Manager and Vice President of the Decentralized Business Unit – one of the three Reprographic Business Units – low, mid, and high.

The late 1970s brought the onslaught of 40+ Japanese competitors in the small copiers, IBM gaining strength in the mid-range and Kodak entering the high-end of copiers/duplicators. Xerox’s very survival was at stake.  Under the wonderful leadership of Xerox’s new CEO, David Kearns, who declared, “We will take them all on and win,” we transformed the business and delivered an entirely new fleet of Products in every business sector in 1987, called the 50 Series in honor of Chester Carlson who invented Xerography fifty years earlier.  Xerox grew the low-end business, ran IBM and Kodak out of the mid-range and high-end, respectively to regain profitable growth and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

A major contributor to Xerox’s success was the good fortune of finding Dr. Genichi Taguchi, the creator of Japan’s Quality Engineering methods – known as Robust Engineering in the western world.  Xerox’s major shortfall was reliability and a primary benefit of Robust Engineering is to improve reliability at the lowest possible cost.  Dr. Don Clausing interviewed Dr. Taguchi in late 1982 and then went to his boss, Barry, with a recommendation to terminate his group of about 100 hundred engineers striving to develop new engineering methods and use the savings to retain Dr. Taguchi, a very unselfish act on his part. Barry’s contribution was to say yes, get corporate funding for Dr. Taguchi, and retain Dr. Clausing’s group as the first to be trained in Robust Engineering.  Dr. Taguchi liked one methodology developed by Dr. Clausing enough to augment it with his methods and add it to his repertoire.

Barry retired from Xerox June 1990 to establish a consulting firm to leverage learning’s from Xerox to help other US manufacturing corporations improve their engineering processes.  Barry’s first client was Ford Motor Company where he started the week after retiring from Xerox. 

During the 1990s, Barry was on the Board of Directors of the American Supplier Institute which started life as the Ford Supplier Institute chartered to train suppliers at the recommendation of Dr. Deming.  In 1996, ASI management asked Barry to create and lead what was called the Impact Team, which included Bill Bellows and Tim Higgins, both founding members of the In2:InThinking Network. Other members included Larry Smith from Ford Motor Company and Dawson Ward and Bob Burdick from Lexmark. The Impact Team was chartered to foster contemporary engineering methods, especially Taguchi’s Robust Engineering, with large manufacturing corporations.  The Impact Team translated fostering into means to reach and engage top management since only top management can successfully guide real change in a large corporation.  You will hear more about the Impact Team in Barry’s presentation.  

Barry joined ASI Consulting Group in 2000 as he became frustrated that he could not cause corporate wide transformation as an independent consultant.  As a member of the ASI CG Team, he has enjoyed helping several corporations achieve significant improvements. Indeed, he came from his new multi-year assignment in England with a division of a major US food company to be with us for this conference.

Barry has published over fifty refereed technical papers and given hundreds of invited presentations including a half-day presentation on the role of engineering in regaining US competitiveness to the National Academy of Science in Washington, DC.  The CEO of Harley Davidson, faced with increasing Japanese competitors, gave a strong but troubling (i.e., looking for government help) presentation on the same subject during the afternoon session. Barry has served on Advisory Panels of a dozen major US University Engineering Departments as well as the National Science Foundation.


Title:  Real Progress Requires a Real Transformation - The Toughest Gig a Leadership Team Can Undertake
                                       

Abstract: Large enterprises resist change as if it were a bad disease to which they are totally immune.  Even CEOs encounter great difficulty in leading real change through their enterprises.

While enterprise change initiatives often come from senior executives, what happens if the need or opportunity for innovation is identified by someone multiple levels down in the organization?  Are enterprises as resistant to such lower-level suggestions?   Suppose that the individual possesses sufficient gumption to attempt the Mt. Everest-like climb up the organizational hierarchy to the top with the dream that the CEO will understand the wisdom of his or her idea and take action.  History teaches that the chance of success is, at best, grim. Hence, the body of knowledge and discoveries of the many is reduced to hallway peer to peer conversations.  While everyone may be encouraged to be a leader, all too often, his or her leadership is limited to subordinates and peers. The resulting frustration and demoralization is largely hidden from senior executives.

Now suppose that an individual or group of individuals outside the enterprise attempts the same climb to the top.  Impossible? Probably! But that was the challenge given to a group called the Impact Team which included several founding members of the In2:In Thinking, as well as employees of Ford and Lexmark.  To make the task even more daunting, the topic was Dr. Genichi Taguchi’s Robust Engineering methodology, a name and topic foreign to most members of any top management team.  Learnings from that experience will be shared to provide insights on a path for fellow leaders to follow.